


Aunt Olive at the end of the world

by queen_ypolita



Category: The Charioteer - Mary Renault
Genre: Community: trope_bingo, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-26
Updated: 2014-05-26
Packaged: 2018-01-26 14:42:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1692056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queen_ypolita/pseuds/queen_ypolita
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A moonlit night during the war turns into something even more apocalyptic for Aunt Olive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Aunt Olive at the end of the world

**Author's Note:**

> Written for my trope_bingo card square au: apocalypse

It was dark outside when Olive pushed the door closed behind her and felt in her coat pocket for her torch. It had been a long night: Mrs Stephenson usually left the younger children in the care of Vera, who was thirteen, when she had to go out in the evening, but Vera was ill tonight, with a fever running high so Olive had offered to watch the children instead. Harriet and Arthur had been slightly overexcited by the change of routine, but had eventually settled out for their meal and gone to bed only a little past their usual hour and had insisted that she read to them. Which she had done, although she had never been very good with doing different voices. But it had done the trick and the children had settled. Returning downstairs, she had checked on Vera, still resting on the sofa until her mother came back home. She was asleep but seemed a bit restless, so Olive sat down in the armchair where she could keep an eye on her and knit at the same time. Mrs Stephenson, when she arrived, had sent Vera to bed, and then asked Olive to stay for one last cup of tea and some gossip from the knitting circle tonight. It had been a pleasant end to the day, and she had been reluctant to get up and leave, but it had been time. 

She went round the corner of the Stephensons' cottage. It had been a grey cloudy day, but the moon was out now with no clouds in sight. It was bright enough to take the shortcut along the footpath that skirted the woods, which she hadn't been planning on doing, but it was otherwise much pleasanter and quicker route than following the road. In the moonlight, she wouldn't need her torch. Not that a torch did much good these days, in the blackout one had to make do with a dim narrow beam at the best of times. 

She reached the point where the path came out of the trees and provided a view over the valley, all the way to the town at the distance further along the river winding its way through the valley. Before the war, on evenings like this one had been able to see some of the lights in the town, from billboards and streetlights, but tonight there was nothing. A cloudless moonlit night meant air raids, of course. The thought made her shiver and pull her coat tighter even if she wasn't feeling particularly cold. 

She reached a fork in the path and was about follow the path round a bend when she thought she saw something in the corner of her eye and turned back to look over the valley. First she could see nothing, then she saw the movement. It must be the raid coming, and as she looked again, she could see the anti-aircraft lights sweeping the sky far away. The sight made her gasp. 

The sky was teeming with airships that looked nothing like the German bombers she had seen before. She suddenly remember the story she'd once heard, about these gullible listeners of _The War of the Worlds_ on the wireless who had thought it was real. What she was seeing now seemed just as fantastical as _The War of the Worlds_. There were large round shapes all over the sky, moving slowly and inevitable forward.

She couldn't take her eyes off the strange airships, but she made her reluctant feet move a little to retreat into the shadow of a couple of old oak trees. The shapes in the sky looked majestic but utterly alien. She closed her eyes and pinched herself hard, but the ships were still in the sky when she opened her eyes again, still moving slowly. Then there was a series of flashes and she understood instantly that the ships had opened fire. She had only seen news reels of bombing, in London and elsewhere, but never quite like this, and this firing looked different. Then a more familiar sight of fire and smoke rising up appeared: the town had been hit. Looking up, she saw something was happening to the large ships: they were breaking up—no, smaller pod-like sections were separating from the larger ships and were soon teeming all over the sky, firing as they went. 

She stood transfixed on her spot in the shadow of the oak trees until two or three pods fly overhead, firing and a nearby tree caught fire. She was suddenly afraid: this was real, not some strange hallucination. She started towards the path, hurrying. Another pod whizzed low above her and its fire set the undergrowth skirting the footpath she was following into flames. She speeded up, running now, faster than she had done ever since she had been a schoolgirl on a hockey field. 

She had almost reached her cottage when she heard a echoing voice. She couldn't place it at first, then realised that it must be coming from one of the airships. At first she couldn't tell what the voice was saying—there were words, but it was all indistinct, like the annoucements at a county fair. The voice kept going and became louder and clearer. It still sounded strange, but she could finally discern words: _—istance is futile. You will all become dust, we will prevail. Resitance is futile._

Hearing it, all of a sudden she wanted to laugh. It didn't seem real—she still felt like she had suddenly dropped into a far-fetched adventure story for boys. But there was a flash of light and the ash and rowan in her garden caught fire. It was real and it was happening. 

There was another flash and before she could even gasp, it was all over for her while the world all over slowly caught fire and burned down to ash.


End file.
